


Songs in Ordinary Time

by omiceti



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-16
Updated: 2011-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 16:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omiceti/pseuds/omiceti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Alex, stuck in West Virginia in Witness Protection, stopped worrying and learned to love alpacas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songs in Ordinary Time

All her new paperwork has been processed (Laura Rennick/35/born Madison, Wisconsin) and her new job – teaching the future parole officers of America legal theory at the community college – doesn’t start until Monday, so Alex finds herself a little lost driving back from the dealership on Thursday afternoon. Agent Callan – “friend of the family,” Alex is tired of saying – had prodded her toward the pickups, which looked ridiculous, but once she’d gotten in the cab Alex had discovered she liked it, the view of the road, the long look behind her. It makes her feel safe. And Callan, looking secretly amused, had told her it would be practical.

WITSEC is all about practical.

Alex’s new house, dropped gracelessly along a rural road somewhere outside Martinsburg, is a low-slung ranch affair with vinyl siding, a cheap-looking front porch, a rickety back shed, a long unpaved driveway and two inexplicably fenced acres of scruffy grass. The roof is the color of vomit and the paint on the gutters is peeling But it will do, because it has to. Alex, too, is all about practical. These days.

Looking at the house depresses her. Being inside the house depresses her more, rattling around in the strange plastic box. The land around it should be reassuring: all that flat space with its valiant, unsuccessful grass, no cover, nowhere for killers to hide, but it doesn’t really help. There would be nowhere for her to go, anyway, besides wherever it is dead people go in Martinsburg, probably some blue-lit basement in a crumbling government building in what passes for downtown, waiting for a Y-cut and country justice. Alex wonders, not for the first time, whether they’d return her body to New York for a second funeral. She should ask Callan about that sometime.

It’s hot outside so Alex rolls down the window, because sometimes fresh air, the wind in her face, reminds her that she’s not dead, that things don’t pass through her the way they ought to, that she’s solid enough to deflect air. And that’s how, a couple of hundred yards from “home,” Alex hears the thread of a very strange sound.

It’s a weird, high-pitched hum, or whine, but there’s no machinery out here besides Alex’s A/C unit, and it’s not loud enough to carry all the way out here. It sounds like maybe something is distressed. Alex pulls over against her better judgment and crosses the road – the pavement is searing – to try to find it. It’s scrubby and semi-cleared, with trees growing back over what was once probably a pasture of some kind, judging from the scraps of rusted fence wiring. Alex picks her way over it, carefully, and is happy that she wore sensible shoes to test-drive her new truck. The shaded ground is a bit cooler, and the weird, vaguely human sound is much louder now. Around a struggling tree, Alex finds it: two of the oddest-looking things she’s ever seen, all legs and neck and nose, with ridiculous knots of crimpy hair falling into skinny, awkward faces. Llamas, she thinks, then: no, alpacas. They’re both staring at her, huddling together, necks touching.

“Hi,” Alex says, voice low and calm. “Hi. I’m – I’m Laura.” Alex can’t believe that she just lied to a pair of fucking _alpacas_ about her name. But it’s best to practice. Callan would be proud. So would – well, no. She can’t go there.

She steps closer, and they continue to stare. One of the animals is the color of butterscotch dropped in sand, and the other is dark, like the espresso she misses because apparently Manhattan is the only place in America where people magically know how to order correctly roasted coffee beans. They are both wearing, she notices, leads around their heads. She can see their ribs, and their eyes are large and brown and soulful. They let her get to within five paces or so before the blond one starts tossing its head, so she stops and waits, and the alpacas look at each other and look at her and look at the trees. They both have marks on the fur in their neck like a freshly-mown lawn, where the blades of the shearer have clipped them close to the skin. Their eyelashes are ludicrously long.

The humming sound diminishes a little, and then the darker alpaca steps toward her, head weaving back and forth at the end of its long, thin neck. The effect is weirdly lizard-like. “Hi,” Alex says again, and reaches out, and suddenly the alpaca’s neck is under her hand, warm and soft and fragile, and she can feel the pulse rapid and vibrant under her fingers. The blond animal seems reassured, steps closer, and they’re both really skinny and this is probably the weirdest thing she’s ever done, but she recognizes something about the look of loss and confusion in their eyes. She takes hold of the leads, and they seem willing to go with her. It won’t take too long to walk them back to the house, and then she can come back for the truck. Not like there’s anyone out here to steal it.

*

She opens the gate of her fence and lets them into the yard. They continue to stare at her, making another sort of weird, choked-up humming sound, like _uuurrrggghh._ But they seem calm enough. Alex figures there’s probably enough grass in this pitiful yard to feed a couple of alpacas for a little while, and at least now they’re safe.

The darker alpaca leans in for another neck rub. “Both girls,” Alex tells them, like it’s totally normal for her to be talking to a pair of stunted camels, for Chrissake. She wonders, not for the first time, what Liz Donnelly would say if she could see her now. “You’re Ruth.” The blond one begins nosing around the grass. “And you’re Sandra.”

Sandra twitches her long, eloquent ears and ignores her.

*

Thankfully her internet is already wired, because it means she can get quick directions to the feed store. Alex is somehow not surprised that there’s one located three point seven miles from her house, estimated driving time approximately nine minutes. She can save her alpaca research for later, after she finds Sandra and Ruth something to eat.

She tries not to reflect on the fact that she’s driving a pickup truck to a feed store in West Virginia, because all together like that she wants to shrivel up inside this identity that doesn’t belong to her any more than did any of the others and die, like a beetle. But she can’t do that, because her job – her only job – is to be alive. Plus, the alpacas are depending on her.

The feed store is a corrugated metal building painted red. It doesn’t have a parking lot so much as a dusty patch of not-quite-pavement, separated from the road by a white plastic sign with black plastic letters, like one of the churches Alex will never, ever enter, proclaiming APPALACHIAN FARM PROVISIONS HALF PRICE CHICKS. NUTRA-HEY NOW HERE. She guesses they’ve run out of the letter A.

Just as she reaches the screened door, it swings out, and she jumps backward, every nerve in her body screaming _ambush,_ screaming _run._ But behind the door is a small girl, with a disheveled ponytail and a serious expression. Alex is acutely aware of her pounding heart and sweaty hands.

“I like your truck,” the girl tells her, and she’s standing squarely in the doorway. “It’s blue. Blue is my favorite.”

“Thanks,” Alex tells her. “Uh, blue is my favorite too.” _Is that how you talk to kids?_ she wonders. She really has no idea. She can get kids to point to anatomically correct dolls and tell a courtroom full of strange adults exactly where it hurt and how long and how often, but she doesn’t have a lot of experience talking to kids about things kids should know how to say. Meanwhile, the girl is continuing to stare at her, apparently unmoved by Alex’s favorite color. She wonders if the kid could tell she was lying.

“Um,” Alex says. “Do you think maybe you could let me in?” Her neck is getting a little sweaty, and the dust is making her eyes water.

“Are you going to buy something?” the girl asks her seriously. “Because it’s better if you buy something.”

Alex opens her mouth to say that yes, she is going to buy something, but the exchange is blessedly cut short by an adult voice saying “Julie! Let the nice lady in!” and as the girl steps aside, Alex’s eyes adjust to the much dimmer interior. The voice belongs to a solidly-built woman with an open face and kind eyes. “Julie,” she tells the girl, “go on in the back and check on Ben for me, okay?” She smiles at Alex as Julie vanishes into the dim, dusty back of the store, which is cool and smells like burlap sacks, freshly cut grass and hard work. “What can I help you with?” Her voice is mid-range and edged with a soft twang.

“Your daughter is cute,” Alex says lamely, because she’s way out of her depth here and there’s almost nothing she hates more than that.

“Oh, she’s my niece,” the woman tells her, extending a hand. Alex shakes it, and her grip is firm and strong and lovingly calloused. “I’m not the type for having babies. My sister Susie, she’s got some problems, and I’ve got her two until she straightens out her shit. Beth Jacobs. What brings you here?”

It takes Alex a moment to process this information. _Did she just tell me she’s gay?_ “I’ve acquired a pair of alpacas,” she tells Beth. “I don’t know what to do with them.”

“Alpacas,” Beth repeats speculatively. “Interesting choice.”

Alex, for some reason, feels herself blushing. “I just – found them, alone, by the side of the road. So I took them home. There was nothing around.”

Beth is frowning. “You live out by the county road?”

“Maybe?”

“You’re not from around here, I guess.”

Alex allows herself to smile. “That obvious?”

Beth laughs. “Parnells used to have an alpaca farm up there, sold ‘em off to some guy from Pennsylvania. They were missing two. No one could find ‘em. People say they’re not too bright, alpacas, but they’ve got minds of their own.” She looks at Alex carefully. Her eyes might be green, or gray, or blue, even – Alex is adjusting to the light, but it’s hard to tell. Beth’s hair is an indeterminate shade of brown. “Would’ve been about ten days ago. I helped load ‘em, so I know the Parnells didn’t charge that guy for the missing two. Guess that means they’re yours if you want ‘em.”

It hadn’t actually occurred to her that Sandra and Ruth might not be hers. They’d chosen her, after all. They even had names. “I do,” she tells Beth. “But, uh, I don’t know anything about alpacas. Or animals in general, really.”

The other woman’s snicker is not unkind. “Wouldn’t have guessed.”

Beth shows her the right kind of hay and vitamins – “got a couple of alpaca hobbyists out this way” – and helps her carry it outside and stack it in the bed of her truck. Alex is oddly pleased that Beth seems to approve of it. She wipes a stray piece of newly-dyed reddish hair out of her face, and notes that in the sunlight Beth is actually kind of pretty, in a wholesome, tractor-fixing way.

“One thing I forgot to tell you,” Beth says, as Alex is about to drive back to where she’s sort of looking forward to seeing Sandra and Ruth. “If I remember right, I’m pretty sure those particular two alpacas are pregnant.”

*

Her new job isn’t completely awful. It definitely beats claims adjustment, anyway. Alex watches Sandra and Ruth every day looking for signs of pregnancy, but they just look like, well, alpacas, comfortably outlandish. They require almost nothing from her – hay and water, and they’re even polite enough to leave small, odor-free piles of droppings in the same corner every day. They wait for her at the fence near the driveway in the afternoons, and make contented snuggly sounds with her, and fight with each other over the kiddie pool Beth told her to put in the backyard for them. They nibble on the hay stuck to each other’s backs and seem to enjoy the treats Beth suggests when Alex stops by the store every Monday on her way back from work. She doesn’t need to go there so often, but she doesn’t want to run low on supplies. And Beth is always welcoming and kind and somehow restorative, and Julie is always serious and watchful, and Ben is kind of fun to play with, all giggles and uncoordinated attempts to crawl. She hates lying to Beth, but she's grown resigned to it, quieting the voices that whisper fraud and traitor at the back of her mind.

She’s no longer afraid to admit that she’s charmed by the alpacas, and that they make her less sad, their faces at the window keeping her company while she cooks, dinner for one, and eats by herself, again. (Still.) And she’s always been a solitary person, really, unused to sharing space and disinclined to seek company, but she’s learned what a difference it makes to have a choice about it. The extra creatures make her feel less afraid, and it’s good to know that if she were dead or disappeared or relocated, something would notice. They’re always curious about her, ambling over to check up on what she’s up to, peering into the kitchen window that looks out over the backyard.

And she can talk to them. Sometimes it’s difficult to evade the inane shrink Callan is always trying to get her to see, but talking to that idiot is infinitely more frustrating than talking to the alpacas, who look at her placidly and hum back, chewing contemplatively. Ruth is particularly fond of having her chin scratched, and will permit Alex to do it for hours while she talks to them about new appellate decisions and how frustrating some of her students can be and never, ever about her real life, the one she aches for every day.

*

On the eighteenth of July Alex goes out to fill the alpacas’ kiddie pool and Sandra is lying down, foaming at the mouth.

She panics, which is uncharacteristic. Used to be uncharacteristic. But she’s playing another character so it’s all to be expected, really. She calls the feed store.

Beth’s voice is solid, familiar, calm. Alex can barely breathe enough to tell her what’s happening. “Stay calm,” Beth tells her, miraculously managing not to sound patronizing. “Listen, I think all you’ve got is black patch, but I’m going to come over, okay?”

“What the hell is black patch?” Alex asks her, and she can hear the awful keening strangeness in her voice but the idea of losing one of the alpacas is almost more than she can bear and “black patch” doesn’t sound good at all.

“It’s fungal. But it’s not a big deal. But I’ll be right there, okay? I just, uh, I have to bring the kids.”

“Fine!” Alex tells her, and Ruth is nosing around like nothing at all is going on, and Alex is losing her everloving mind out here.

*

Beth pulls up in a truck remarkably similar to Alex’s own, and parks in a shady spot on the long driveway. “Stay here for now,” Alex hears her say to Julie as she runs out to meet her, and she knows from the thrum of tension in Beth’s voice that she might be a little worried.

“Thanks for coming,” Alex says breathlessly. “I just –”

“I know,” Beth says kindly, and she’s walking quickly, calmly up to the gate, where Ruth is meeting her on the other side, curious. In the yard behind her Sandra is watching them placidly, but the foam is horrifying Alex, and it’s almost too much to see.

“Hey, girl,” Beth says, and pats Ruth’s neck firmly, and then she’s kneeling next to Sandra, who sniffs at her with interest. Ruth investigates her pockets while Beth talks to Sandra, and then she turns to Alex. “Notice anything unusual about her?”

“No,” Alex says. “She’s been completely normal, and then all of a sudden she was - like this.”

“I need to look at your hay,” Beth tells her, cutting her off before Alex can get any more upset. When she emerges from the shed where Alex keeps it, her face is stormy. “It’s my fault.”

“What?”

“They get like this when they eat clover, some of ‘em. That’s why I never sell you clover, but this batch is full of it. Got mixed up on the truck, most likely.”

Beth reaches for Alex’s hand. “Hon, she’ll be just fine. But I am so sorry to scare you like that.”

Relief is bubbling up in her, fluid and cool. She hugs Beth suddenly, in gratitude, but Beth’s arms wrap around her in a sort of too-comforting way and suddenly her cheeks are a little wet and Beth is just holding her. Alex feels safe, and almost fails to recognize the feeling.

She steps back, after a moment of peace that could have lasted two seconds or two hours, she can’t tell. Beth is smiling, and her eyes hold promise.

“Do you think,” Alex asks her, “that the kids might like to meet the alpacas?”

Beth’s smile widens. “I do think that.”

*

Alex holds Ben, who sleeps in her arms like a heavy bit of punctuation, warm and necessary. Beth shows Julie how to pet an alpaca, and Julie, staring up at Ruth with her large, too-grave eyes, strokes Ruth’s neck very correctly. Ruth leans down slowly and nuzzles Julie’s face, and Julie actually smiles, face suddenly lit with the delight Alex almost never sees, which makes Alex want to kiss the alpaca right on her strange, fuzzy nose. Sandra, in a sudden fit of energy, is more interested in the baby, and she winds her neck around Alex’s body so she can sniff delicately at Ben’s fat, soft legs, kicking vaguely in his sleep.

Beth smiles at her, and there’s something like affection in it. “Might need help later on,” she says mildly. “When these two have their babies.”

“I will,” Alex tells her, and wonders how she hasn’t really seen the alpacas’ gently swelling bellies. Maybe because she sees them every day. She might like to see Beth every day, too.

“Alpaca babies are the greatest,” Beth tells her, looking at Julie, who is still grinning from ear to ear, whispering to Ruth in some language only she understands. She looks, finally, like the child she is, and Beth says, “I think Julie likes being here.”

“I like having her here,” Alex says simply, and means it, and they just smile, until everything finally, finally seems clear and safe and real. It’s not a family, but it’s something. For now, it’s enough.


End file.
